The present invention relates to speech processing. More specifically, the present invention relates to voice message processing for processing voice messages received by a distributed system.
Currently, many people receive a large number of different types of messages from a wide variety of sources. For example, it is not uncommon for persons to receive tens of voice mail messages over a weekend. Exacerbating this problem is the recent use of unified messaging. In a unified messaging system, messages from a wide variety of sources, such as voice messages, electronic mail messages, fax messages, and instant messages, can be accessed in a seamlessly united manner. However, compared to electronic mail messages and instant messaging systems, the type of information associated with voice messages is very limited.
For example, an electronic mail message typically includes the identity of the sender, a subject line, and an indication as to priority. Similarly, such messages can be fairly easily scanned, copied and pasted, since they are textual in nature. By contrast, voice mail messages typically do not have any indication of sender. In systems equipped with caller identification, the incoming number can be identified and a presumed sender can also be identified, if the incoming number is associated with a person. However, such systems only track a telephone, and not a speaker. Voice mail messages typically do not include an indication as to subject or priority, and are also difficult to scan, copy and paste, since they are vocal in nature, rather than written.
The lack of information associated with voice messages make them more time consuming to process. For example, it is possible to eliminate many electronic mail messages simply by skimming the subject line or the sender line, and deleting them immediately from the mail box if they are not desired, or organizing them into a desired folder. In fact, this can even be done automatically by specifying rules for deleting mail messages from certain users or having certain subjects.
Scanning voice mail messages, on the other hand, typically requires a much greater amount of time, because the user must listen to each message simply to extract the basic information such as the sender and subject. It is also virtually impossible, currently, to automatically create rules to pre-organize voice mail messages (such as to organize them by sender, subject or urgency).